
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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Society

City Personals
Mary Clay Brooks

Original painting of Kate Freeman Clark will be auctioned off at gala

Rowan Thompson of Dallas, Tx., was the weekend guest of Kay and Laura Wheeler. While here, he also visited with Mary Clay and Gene Brooks and children, Caitlyn and Grady. He enjoyed watching the Ole Miss baseball team play LSU and also going to the Double Decker Festival in Oxford.

Tammy Cupp and Becky Cupp attended the birthday party of Emma Grace Cupp Sunday afternoon in Southaven.

The Marshall Academy Lady Patriots softball team travelled to NWMCC Monday afternoon to watch the Lady Rangers take on EMCC. The Lady Rangers were victorious in both games. Former Lady Patriot, Mandy Bolden, is starting short stop and played her last home games that afternoon. Good luck, Mandy, in your future endeavors!

It is time once again for the Kate Freeman Clark Art Gala! Every four years, the board of trustees of the art gallery hold a gala, complete with an original painting of Kate Freeman Clark’s being auctioned. The event is a grand one and will have both live and silent auctions, a catered dinner, spirits and live music provided by the fabulous Bouffants.

There will be a plethora of offerings in all categories, having something for everyone. Many fine artists from around the country, and some from Mississippi, have graciously donated their works for auction. If you are looking for that special piece of artwork, pottery or just a little something to treat yourself, come on out!

If you are interested in obtaining tickets, please contact Ann Callicutt, 662-252-1563. There is limited seating, so you want to be sure to secure your place now! Ticket prices are $80 and will include all of the aforementioned. Come on out and support the Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery! It is sure to be a magnificent event and, if you miss it this year, the opportunity will not roll around again until 2014!

(To put your news in City Personals, please e-mail maryclayb@yahoo.com; mail to City Personals, The South Reporter, P.O. Box 278, Holly Springs, MS 38635 or call 662-252-4261. You may also e-mail your City Personal news to south@dixie-net.com).

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

History tour will come at later date

One of the personalities I remember from the past is the grand old gentleman, Fort Daniel, who lived in the “Fort Daniel House.”

Strangers think the house was named for a fort, but it was named after him. He was born in 1883 in this house and lived his entire life there except when he went off to school and for awhile during his first marriage.

At that time he built Lismore Cottage for his wife, but she died in childbirth and he sold the house. He and the baby (Pokie French) moved back into Fort Daniel.

Fort attended St. Thomas Hall which was located on the northwest corner by Salem Bridge. Imagine knowing someone who attended St. Thomas Hall! It burned on New Year’s Eve in 1898. Then he was tutored at the Featherston Place where the school temporarily set up after their school was burned.

In the fall of 1899, Fort went to school at Jefferson College, ten miles east of Natchez, the oldest school in the state.

Holly Springs University was built in 1837 and is the second oldest college in the state still standing. Fort and five more boys from here went there together. The other boys were Hugh Rather, Leo Shumaker, Percy Anderson, Graham McWilliams and Charlie Fite from Early Grove community went down there with him. Their mode of travel to get to Jefferson was a wagon drawn by four mules and the driver was Tom Woodley. Planks were placed across the wagon bed and usually about 20 boys made the trip. The round trip fare was twenty-five cents each.

Fort Daniel also attended Ole Miss where he belonged to the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Then he came home and lived the rest of his life in Holly Springs. He was vice president of the Bank of Holly Springs when we remember him.

Let’s remember that without the April showers, there will be no May flowers, but having to dodge the lightening and quake at the thunder rumbles is a little scary.

I only remember one tornado landing here. Tornadoes don’t usually seek us out as we are on a hilltop. The tornado I remember was in the late sixties.

I was reading at home alone in Gray Gables it was about twilight. It was hardly raining and all of a sudden, there was a sound of a freight train coming right down College Avenue. The tornado touched base at the top of the hill in front of Gray Gables, fell into the bottom of the hollow, then bounced up onto Chesterman Street and damaged the rooftops of all the houses on the periphery. That was the total damage done but it was really scary.

When I was a child, I and my two cousins, Jane and Mary Earl, went to see my Aunt Gussie, who lived on a high hill in Abbeville.

Once she had her house to blow away in a storm, so she was really afraid of storms. It was cloudy and Aunt Gussie said, “Now girls, if it storms we have to go to the storm cellar.”

So that night I prayed for rain. God answers prayer and about 2 o’clock in the morning came a great storm. Aunt Gussie woke us up to go to the storm cellar, which was like a cave down the hill. I remember running across the garden patch using the lightening and Aunt Gussie’s lantern for a light.

When we got to the cellar, it had a wooden door. On the inside were clay beds carved on the three sides of the room. All over these bench levels were seed onions which reeked the air. We had to push the onions out of the way to sit down. Then I began praying for the storm to cease as the storm cellar gave me the creeps. Before daylight it was over and I was saying, “Thank you, Lord.”

Unfortunately, we will not be able to have the history tour on May 1 as we couldn’t reach all the necessary people to have it. We are planning the tour later in May if it is possible.

History has a way of eluding us and it’s like a game of chase the rabbit or sometimes it just evaporates in the air, but the history tour will be great when we have it.

Correction for last week’s article: cost of the Natchez Pilgrimage in 1933 and the Holly Springs Pilgrimage in 1936 was $1 per person to see all the houses on tour. Seems unreal but we were in the grips of the Great Depression.

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